*We like reusing plastic as much as we can, so no, these trays of baby lettuce plants are not actually pickling cucumbers…. the other side of the tags have their actual names! photo by Adam Ford.*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have spinach, green curly kale, baby kale, claytonia, mesclun mix, parsley, cilantro, red beets, yellow beets, chioggia beets, carrots, onions, daikon radishes, watermelon radish, kohlrabi, and red and yellow potatoes.

*carrots, onions, and beets are now sourced from Juniper Hill Farm, also certified organic

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag

Ordering closes at noon on Tuesdays for Wednesday bags, and at midnight on Wednesdays for Friday bags.

You do not need to fill out the form if you plan to come to the barn on Wednesdays or Thursdays to pick out your items yourself.

CSA pickup and delivery days and times

Farm News

Hooray, we got around to potting up all the tomato seedlings from the small 144 cells into large 4-inch cups. No matter how on top of everything we try to stay, it always feels just a liiiiiiittle behind…. the tomato plants were very eager for their new, larger homes, and could have been done last week if we had the time, but they are looking great now. Before we know it, they will be towering over the plastic covering of the hot water heated table in the propagation house, reminding us to get ready to transplant them into the tunnels. Which is wild, because that will happen in less than a month. It’s always fun to look around at all this deep snow, wonder when spring will show up, and then feel alright about it, because we will be transplanting tomatoes soon enough in the tunnels.

The smell of tomato plants is hands down, one of my absolute favorite smells. Which I have always found a bit funny, because the smell of tomato plants isn’t a smell you want to eat. I am not about to chop up tomato stems and leaves for my next bruschetta. I guess it’s just a smell of the excitement of summer, and bursting gardens, and hot days, and picking fresh fruit for pico de gallo. For years when my brothers and I were little my mom tended a decent sized garden plot at a community garden in my home town. I loved all the smells from that place when I was little, and I can close my eyes and smell them now: The dirt in the garden always smelled sweet and warm, the compost in the seed starting greenhouse smelled acidic and like olives (I can’t really explain that one), and the air in that growing space was full of the smells of baby plants. Olfactory memories usually bring me a sense of joy and affectionate nostalgia. So the other day, when I was in the greenhouse with our kids, and our older kiddo took a deep breath, and with all the excitement of a 6-year-old, said, “WOW! The tomato plants smell SO GOOD! I can’t wait for summer!” it reminded me of all the positive childhood memories I had of loading into our station wagon, driving across town, “helping” my mom (which was usually just climbing up and sliding down compost piles while she weeded), and then proudly taking home some of whatever was available to harvest. I always thought growing up on a veggie farm would be VERY COOL for our kids, but surprise, it’s mostly something they don’t notice. So when the DO notice how cool it is, like the smells of the tomato plants, it makes the circus of parenting and farming feel a bit worth it.

Ryan and Cindy finished setting up the new cooler last week, and then they moved all the storage veggies into it. It filled up real quick! This time of year, the root cellar starts getting a bit too warm to keep veggies at the best temperature for adequate storage into spring. This will allow us to have to cull fewer veggies throughout the next 2 months. Next week we will start potting up all the pepper plants. We started seeding all the long season crops for the seedlings we sell for other folks to have fabulous summer gardens (and then fabulous summer meals and olfactory memories). We plan to catch up on some chickweed weeding in the tunnels soon. The new pellet stove for the propagation house should arrive early next week, so that will be a project to install. We look forward to seeing how this year’s plant starts compare to all the previous years with this backup heat option. The propagation house continues to fill up fast! Last year was our first year with a larger space in there. (The previous summer we added 600 square feet of space to it by adding on several bows off the back.) And it was fully packed last year with that expansion. It’s fun to see how many plants get started in there!

Have a great week,

ESF Team: Ryan, Kara, Galen, Taylor, Cindy, Katie, K2, (and Sky and Soraya)